It is painful to see the police and their vehicles facing the large number of miners. It is a picture that inevitably brings back memories of the bad days of the apartheid past when confrontations with police were common. This image does however prompt the feeling that perhaps the culture of violence in those earlier times still remains and has not yet been exorcised – even though freedom has been won.
And we are not strangers to the culture of violence in Zimbabwe. It has become a habitual weapon of the powerful. It is a mockery of the freedom our countries have achieved at such cost. Our independence was supposed to end violence as a political tool. The experience of independence and freedom were high moments in our history, but not everyone committed themselves to the obligations, as well as the benefits, freedom brought.
If we go back to one of the earliest celebrations of independence of which we have a record, we see that men and women have not changed. After their victory and entry into the promised land, the Israelites were summoned by Joshua to Shechem to celebrate their new identity and take on the obligations of being a new united people. They all agreed and committed themselves to keep the covenant. But it was not long before they started to grumble and seek their own advantage. They were unable to make that courageous leap of trust in one another that would preserve their new-found unity. And fragmentation led to the disaster that the old testament documents so relentlessly.
It was little different in Jesus’ time. He held out a promise that would transform the people’s lives, but they were not interested in some future benefit that would come after a personal process of growth and struggle. They wanted satisfaction there and then. They opted for immediate gain even if it was of far less benefit than what they would get if they chose the complex working out of the promise that had been won for them.
As I say, it is not for outsiders to sit in judgement on the three-cornered struggle in South Africa between workers, employers and the government. But on the face of it, it is a breakdown of trust in a process that should benefit everyone but which, because of narrow interests and the demand for instant satisfaction, ends up satisfying no one and leaving 34 widows in mourning.
Post published in: Faith